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Personal Independence Payments, welfare reform and the shrinking disability category
Abstract
The question of who counts and how we construct just who can ‘be disabled’ is central to our concerns in disability studies. As Stone makes clear, disability is exactly what a state deems it to be; the very malleable nature of the category has been exploited to widen or more commonly to narrow just who counts as disabled. This article will apply and adapt Stone’s thesis to current plans to revise the Personal Independence Payment extra costs benefit. Using official and disabled people’s narratives, the article will make clear the force with which new definitions of disability are being put forward. This process arguably risks doing state violence to a number of disabled people. These reforms have also used the language of independence in a way that fundamentally distorts the origins and potential of the term in an enabling society.
... The eligibility rules for Carer's Allowance matter not only for their financial effects, but also for the wider effects they may have in defining who is (and who is not) a carer and what that means for understanding care relationships. Social security categories define not only those who are entitled to a benefit, but also who may be recognised as deserving of public support (Roulstone, 2015). ...
... Changes to disability benefits in 2012 meant that some disabled people lost their entitlement to qualifying benefits. These changes, which had a particularly negative impact on people with mental health issues (Machin and McCormack, 2021), were beset with problems of assessment and implementation (Gray, 2017), and affected both the incomes of disabled people and perceptions of who is 'disabled' (Roulstone, 2015). The dyadic relationship central to eligibility for Carer's Allowance meant that these changes to (disabled people's) qualifying benefits also affected carers, lowering both their incomes and public perceptions of who is a 'carer'. ...
This article explores the historical development of Carer’s Allowance in the UK, alongside legal challenges and recent proposals for changes to it in Scotland. Eligibility criteria for receipt of this allowance construct carers as people of ‘working age’ who provide care within dyadic relationships and exclude people whose unpaid caring work is more complex and/or interdependent. Disabled people are simultaneously constructed as dependent recipients of this care. Carer’s Allowance provides symbolic but conditional recognition of unpaid caring, while doing little to meet the financial or support needs of carers. This symbolism reinforces the role of gendered families as the main providers of care and of disabled people as dependent.
... Official recognition of who has a disability and its severity is not fixed, but determined legally through welfare policies that govern eligibility for financial support from the state at any particular time and place. Therefore, the category of disability is open to political meddling, and contingent upon ideological persuasions and economic priorities (Stone, 1984;Roulstone, 2015). ...
... As with the changes to ESA, PIP continued the shift away from benefits as a safety net, in an attempt to distinguish between those deemed as 'deserving' claimants or 'undeserving' (Roulstone, 2015;Machin, 2017). To achieve this shift, the focus was on the functional effects of disability (that is, a person's ability to participate in daily living and mobility activities), rather than what was known about the impact of the condition, as with the more medicalised view (Gray, 2014;Machin, 2017). ...
This article examines how recent welfare reform in the UK has caused systemic violence to people with severe disabilities who are reliant on state benefits. It evaluates the underpinning discourse framings and changes in welfare policies, using concepts of debility and recognition to reveal the inherent contradictions in policies targeting people on the ‘wrong side of inequality’. To help contribute to a recognition of the impact of these changes, the article gives voice to six people with severe disabilities who, through their benefit stories, expose the impact of this violence. Despite these injustices, their stories reveal lives lived with great courage and resilience, and worthy of much greater recognition.
... According to Garthwaite (2011), the process of face-to-face consultations has the potential to both reinforce a medical model of disability and to portray some disabilities or illnesses as deserving of welfare, whilst others are not. As disability is always a social construct (Moraes, 2012), by altering benefit criteria, the government can redefine individuals' entitlement to support and ergo citizenship (Briant et al., 2013;Roulstone, 2015). As fraud levels are low amongst those claiming disability benefits, reclassifying some disabled people as non-disabled (or not 'disabled enough') is seen as a necessary measure to ensure required cost reductions (Briant et al., 2013;Goodley et al., 2014). ...
... Online activism, for example, tends to mobilise around particular issues for a limited-time (perhaps occurring simultaneously with policy changes) as opposed to operating for the long term (Trevisan, 2017b(Trevisan, , 2018 While for Rachel, blogging provided her with a platform through which to communicate her message to the public realm, as outlined in section 3.7, posting on social media can bring about several risks in the current environment of online surveillance (Van Dijck, 2013). In the current climate of austerity, disabled people find themselves constantly under scrutiny (Burke and Crow, 2017;Garthwaite, 2011), with narrow understandings of what constitutes a disability, how it should look and how disabled people should act (Grover and Piggott, 2010;Roulstone, 2015). ...
With the onset of austerity, disabled people in the United Kingdom have faced a sustained period of financial cuts, including cuts to personal income, social care and advocacy organisations. Many individuals have found themselves in increasingly precarious situations, having to rely increasingly on non-statutory, more informal structures of care. Disabled people, however, have not accepted these changes in silence but have often been vocal in their opposition to these cuts. Opposition and resistance can be seen through increased lobbying, the establishing of disability anti-austerity protest groups and the emergence of numerous online campaigns. Austerity has been accompanied by a recent growth in disability activism, as individuals find ways of resisting and coping under increasingly difficult conditions. To date, there has been very limited documentation or analysis of the political struggles of disability activists during a time of austerity. Through adopting a qualitative approach, this study examines the lives of those involved in disability activism, and the places in which their activism is enacted. The findings are drawn from 27 biographical interviews and participant observation at 13 disability activist events. Rather than being a representative study, this research seeks to provide a deep and nuanced insight into the lives of a small number of disabled people who are engaging in activism in response to austerity. It is hoped that this thesis will serve as a form of activism in itself, as a space in which stories can be both shared and heard and used as a possible resource for future generations.
... The politics of austerity underpinned this, with the desire to save money and reduce the number of disability benefit claimants; between 2003 and 2012 the number of people claiming DLA increased from 2.5 million to 3.2 million, at a cost of £12.6 billion per annum. Royston (2017, 9) fears that PIP prioritises 'reduction in provision over the effectiveness of reform' and leads to a 'shrinking disability category' (Roulstone 2015). ...
... Previous analysis has identified a similar range of psychological responses which can be associated with claiming disability benefits in the UK (boardman 2020). Furthermore, it is clear that the participants in this research have been negatively impacted by the shifting construction of disability that has taken place over the last decade (Roulstone 2015); the recent programme of welfare reform has allowed the UK government to redraw the boundaries of how the state defines disability. In our research, this was most powerfully demonstrated when Dennis stated: 'I was made to feel like I wasn't disabled anymore'. ...
This paper examines the impact of major social security reform on mental health claimants by analysing the transition to Personal Independence Payment in the UK. Personal Independence Payment was introduced in April 2013, replacing Disability Living Allowance as the main non-means tested disability benefit intended to assist with the additional costs associated with disability or long-term health conditions. It is important to gain a better understanding of how people with mental health problems have experienced this reform. Twelve service users were interviewed for this qualitative research. Analysis identified three main themes: problems with the Personal Independence Payment claims process; problems conveying mental health problems during the assessment process; and positive experiences associated with the transition to Personal Independence Payment. This research demonstrates that major changes in benefit policy are challenging for people with mental health problems, particularly when delivered in a climate of austerity.
• Points of interest
• The UK Government has changed the main disability benefit for disabled adults. From April 2013, Disability Living Allowance (DLA) has been phased out and replaced by Personal Independence Payment (PIP).
• This research found that this significant change caused difficulties for people with mental health problems.
• Everyone who took part reported increased anxiety, problems with claiming PIP, communicating with benefit officials and the medical assessment.
• It is important to learn from these problems so that future benefit changes, both in the UK and in other countries, can be developed and rolled-out in ways which are more appropriate for people with mental health problems.
... The WCA (2008) and PIP assessment (2012) need also to be understood as instrumental policy responses to political, economic and cultural forces, which acted to constrict the administrative category of disability both in the UK (Roulstone, 2015;Shakespeare et al, 2017) and across OECD countries (OECD, 2010). In earlier decades, during periods of national economic strength and full employment, the contestation of disability benefits was relatively limited. ...
... In earlier decades, during periods of national economic strength and full employment, the contestation of disability benefits was relatively limited. However, this consensus weakened throughout the 1990s, and the 2000s witnessed overt ministerial linking of disability benefits to inauthentic claimants and a 'culture of dependency' (Roulstone, 2015). Media representations of benefit claimants as 'shirkers and scroungers' (Garthwaite, 2011) popularised the image of counterfeit claimants within a broader political-cultural economy that saw social security systems as a prime lever of social, economic and moral deterioration (Jensen and Tyler, 2015). ...
Background
Anti-welfare narratives depict welfare systems as overly-permissive, open to fraud, and fundamentally unfair. Countering these supposed ills have been political appeals to evidence and reforms made to disability benefit assessments under the banner of objectivity. But objectivity is a complex construct, which entails philosophical and political choices that tend to oppress, exclude and symbolically disqualify alternative perspectives.
Aims and objectives
To examine reforms made to UK disability benefits assessments in the name of objectivity.
Methods
Thematic analysis of 50 in-depth qualitative interviews with UK disability benefit claimants.
Findings
Reforms made in pursuit of procedural objectivity reproduce existing social order, meaning claimants without personal, social and economic resources are less likely to succeed. Data reveal an increasingly detached and impersonal assessment process, set against a broader welfare landscape in which advocacy and support have been retrenched. In this context, attaining a valid and reliable assessment was, for many, contingent upon personal, social and economic resources.
Discussion and conclusions
Political appeals to evidence helped establish an impetus and a legitimising logic for welfare reform. Procedural objectivity offers superficially plausible, but ultimately specious, remedies to longstanding anti-welfare tropes. Despite connotations of methodological neutrality, procedural objectivity is not a politically neutral epistemological standpoint. To know disability in a genuinely valid and reliable way, knowledge-making practices must respect dignity and proactively counter exclusory social order. These latter principles promise outcomes that are more trustworthy by virtue of their being more just.
... Thus, any restructuring of the benefits system, in the form of socalled welfare 'reform' that tightens up eligibility and/or reduces benefits (amount, reliability), can have profound impacts on these alreadybounded geographies (DeVerteuil et al., 2002;Power, 2014). An existing literature on the overall reach of reforms and their impact for health and health inequalities Gewurtz et al., 2019;Pearce, 2013;Schrecker and Bambra, 2015;Warren et al., 2014) has also focused on impacts to particular vulnerable populations in specific places, including those in the UK receiving 'out of work' sickness benefits (Barr et al., 2015a,b;Garthwaite, 2014;Garthwaite et al., 2014), disability benefits (Mattheys et al., 2018;Power, 2016;Roulstone, 2015), and those being penalised by the bedroom tax (Moffatt et al., 2016). ...
... The evidence from the interviews lends credence to findings from other recent studies of benefits reform (Barr et al, 2015a,b;Garthwaite, 2014;Garthwaite et al., 2014;Gewurtz et al., 2019;Mattheys et al., 2018;Moffatt et al., 2016;Power, 2016;Roulstone, 2015;Warren et al., 2014): that the re-assessment process is not just flawed for people with mental health problems, but is actively damaging. There was substantial reflection on the part of service users that the assessment processes simply did not appear to regard them as people with particular needs, ones that perhaps could not always be 'seen'. ...
This paper presents the lived experiences of individuals with mental illness as they navigate the benefits landscape in an age of welfare reform in the UK. We focus on the impacts upon their well-being and daily geographies. We articulate the relationship between welfare reform and mental health using the concept of poverty management and its ‘missing geographies’, in which everyday well-being and routines are dismissed by the restructuring welfare system. We liken this dismissal to a shift towards a narrower and more unforgiving mode of poverty management, where even the smallest misstep can unravel the entire edifice of everyday survival and well-being.
... By 2020, 41 states in the United States used one or more such tools (Center for Democracy & Technology 2020). The United Kingdom has a long history of welfare "reform" involving various technologies of disability classification and social sorting (Grover and Soldatić 2013;Roulstone 2015), and in the last two decades or so has moved to outsource much of this work to the IT industry (van Toorn, forthcoming, Grover 2014). ...
... Las personas dependientes por discapacidad no tienen una edad concreta ni otro patrón sociodemográfico y es necesario valorar primero su discapacidad. Ni siquiera son homogéneos en relación a aspectos comparables de su estado de salud, como el origen o el tipo de limitación por lo que el reto es identificar y caracterizar su situación (8). Así, la operacionalización del concepto de discapacidad es importante ya que puede sesgar los resultados de un estudio de dependencia. ...
El objetivo de esta revisión bibliográfica fue identificar las metodologías cuantitativas utilizadas para la medición de la dependencia en adultos con discapacidad. El análisis de los hallazgos de la búsqueda bibliográfica (N=431) se realizó según las etapas PRISMA de revisión sistemática. Los criterios de inclusión fueron libros o artículos publicados en revistas revisadas por pares entre 2010-2020 en inglés, español o portugués, los participantes del estudio entre 18 y 64 años de edad y los participantes no institucionalizados. Se seleccionaron seis estudios para la etapa de extracción de los cuales se analizan las características de las poblaciones estudiadas, las herramientas de medición de la dependencia, las definiciones de discapacidad y dependencia utilizadas, los resultados reportados y las limitaciones de los estudios declaradas por los autores. En todos los estudios considerados se utiliza la medición de la dependencia como variable independiente. Además, existe una variedad de términos para referirse a la dependencia, generando confusión y en ocasiones resultados erróneos. La aportación de este artículo puede ser de interés para mejorar la formación de los recursos humanos que trabajan con personas con discapacidad y de aquellos que toman decisiones en relación a los servicios y políticas que repercuten en la calidad de vida de las personas con discapacidad.
... The WCA, which accompanied the transition from Incapacity Benefit to Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), is far more stringent than previous assessing, being associated with enormous suffering among chronically ill and disabled people as previously outlined (Barr et al. 2016;Stewart 2018;Pring 2017). Further, 'the biopsychosocial model' was acknowledged, during debates leading up to the 2012 Welfare Reform Act, to inform assessments for Personal Independence Payment (PIP), which gradually replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) as part of the Act's provisions (see Faulkner 2016); the profoundly detrimental impact of this transition on disabled people has been discussed elsewhere (Roulstone 2015;Saffer et al., 2018). ...
A particular application of the biopsychosocial model is associated in peer-reviewed literature and patient testimony with harms done to chronically ill and disabled people. These harms derive from an empirically unsubstantiated, neoliberal narrative emphasising the role of personal responsibility and effort in ‘recovery’ from ill-health, ignoring socio-structural contributors to chronic illness and disability. Notably, this biopsychosocial model ignores the health-related impact of welfare and disability insurance reforms which the model has been employed to justify. The model and associated interests can thus be recognised as socio-structural phenomena that should be acknowledged in any truly holistic biopsychosocial approach to chronic illness and disability. A critically informed and reflexive approach to biopsychosocial theorising would allow a more holistic and nuanced understanding of chronic illness and disability, with implications for health and social policy that underline and address what ails society as opposed to what is ‘wrong’ with the individual.
... Le rapport au droit des personnes bénéficiaires de l'aide de dernier recours au contact de diverses cultures juridiques D epuis deux décennies, dans les pays de l'OCDE, on assiste à l'implantation progressive de mesures de contrôle et de restriction de l'accès aux programmes de protection sociale à travers de nouveaux critères d'éligibilité (Beatty et Fothergill, 2015 ;Ducharme, 2018 ;Dufour et al., 2003 ;Roulstone, 2015). Dans ce contexte, les recherches se multiplient afin de documenter les impacts de ces réformes sur les personnes bénéficiaires : processus d'accès complexes qui équivalent à des « rituels de dégradation » (Herd et al., 2005), transfert de la temporalité administrative du processus sur la vie des personnes bénéficiaires (Whelan, 2019), sanctions appliquées indûment transférant le fardeau de la preuve sur les personnes bénéficiaires (Ahluwalia et Tomlinson, 2018), autant de constats qui mettent en lumière l'aspect anxiogène et dévalorisant de ces réformes sur les personnes bénéficiaires, déjà soumises à des stress de survie. ...
Devant le caractère particulièrement polysémique de la « communauté », cette contribution vise à proposer une esquisse typologique à partir de quatre conceptions compréhensives de la notion : 1/ La communauté locale, comme milieu de vie et d’interrelation ; 2/ La communauté associative, comme organisation institutionnalisée ou regroupement militant autour d’un problème ; 3/ La communauté identitaire, centrée autour d’un trait définitionnel prioritaire qui permet de caractériser et de rassembler des individus divers ; 4/ La communauté englobante, le plus souvent territorialisée, à la fois politique et culturelle, assimilée à la nation dans ses traits les plus saillants. La seconde partie du texte s’attelle à mettre cette typologie à l’épreuve en examinant les différentes formes que peut prendre la communauté des Sourds à travers la large diversité de ses expressions et de ses revendications.
... The introduction of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) in 2013 fundamentally changed disability assessments and redrew the boundaries of what (and who) is considered disabled. This is a striking example of how the social construction of disability is manifested so explicitly in policing what, officially, 'counts' as disability (Roulstone, 2015). In practice, PIP claimants fill in a questionnaire about activities of daily living entitled 'how your disability affects you' (DWP, 2021a), which healthcare professionals (HCPs) use during a semi-structured PIP assessment interview to evaluate their eligibility for PIP on a nine-point scale. ...
Recent UK policy changes enable claimants to record their Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments, presenting an opportunity to study how they are produced interactionally. Disabled people have often reported feeling disempowered by PIP assessments, and these assessments are notoriously inaccurate – the vast majority are overturned in the claimants’ favour upon appeal. Given the quality of claimants’ lives often depends on their outcome, it is urgent to learn how the assessment process yields so many successful appeals. Here we analyse a small sample of one PIP assessment recording, uploaded to YouTube by the claimant, to show the importance of understanding these high-stakes interactional situations. We intend for this to show the importance of looking at the interactional detail of PIP assessments, which have hitherto been hidden from scrutiny because of the difficulty of obtaining recordings of assessments.
... They contained a smörgåsbord of interwoven reforms, many of which clustered around low-income working age households. The former introduced eight large-scale reforms, including the introduction of Universal Credit (a reform designed to 'subsume' a number of preexisting working age benefits together, affecting millions of families) (Royston 2012), Personal Independence Payments (a wide-reaching reform to payments to support the costs of disability by replacing Disability Living Allowance) (Roulstone 2015), and the Benefit Cap (a 'limit' for the total amount of working-age benefits a household can receive). 1 The latter reduced the level of the Benefit Cap, introduced the 'two-child limit' in Child Tax Credit/Universal Credit (O'Brien 2018), and introduced various benefit freezes, abolitions, and conditionality. ...
Notwithstanding its central place in social security policy-making and in the experiences of those on the receiving end of welfare reforms, cumulative impact is an under interrogated and theorised problem in social welfare scholarship. This paper seeks to address this in two ways. First, it draws on the lessons of the comparatively well-developed literature on cumulative impact in environmental studies to: (i) identify different dimensions of cumulative impact and (ii) best practices in undertaking cumulative impact assessments. Second, it argues that having regard to cumulative impact is not just good policy-making, but is also a legal obligation. To discharge the “Public Sector Equality Duty” under s.149 Equality Act 2010, a public authority needs to have due regard to clear cumulative impacts between measures. In the context of social security policy-making, a failure to undertake enquiries to establish cumulative impacts between polices is likely to breach the PSED. Drawing on examples from the UK Government’s Welfare Reform Act 2012 and the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016 throughout, the paper makes the case for both the importance of addressing cumulative impact in policymaking, and the need for greater interrogation by social welfare scholarship.
... Examples include the below inflation uprating of benefits under the 2010 Coalition government, followed by freezing of benefit rates under the 2015 Conservative administration (Beatty & Fothergill, 2016). Another is the restriction of access to cash benefits by redrawing eligibility boundaries, for instance the Coalition government's prediction in 2013 of an eventual one quarter reduction in those eligible to access disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) when it replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) (Roulstone, 2015;Kennedy, 2017). ...
This EU Horizon 2020 funded study examines the impact of welfare reform on claimants with mental health needs in England, in particular the effects of the recent introduction of two social protection measures: Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) and Personal Independence Payment (PIP). Our analysis indicates that reduced access to and adequacy of benefit coverage under these reforms, particularly the elements linked to increased conditionality, have led to diminished levels of social protection for people with mental health needs. We also identify how discriminatory processes in the benefits system have negatively impacted the sense of self- respect and security experienced by claimants. Overall our data suggest that ESA and PIP processes undermine claimants’ subjective wellbeing and exacerbate experiences of mental distress. We therefore propose the term ‘benefits distress’ to describe these forms of suffering that are being institutionally propagated by UK government agencies and the corporations to which state welfare functions are outsourced. The study is part of the wider European RE-InVEST project to investigate the impact of active labour market and social protection policy on marginalised social groups since the financial crisis of 2007.
... This study supports the evidence of continued financial challenges to the cost of caring, which raises the question of the immoral state abdication of responsibility for caring for our most vulnerable members of society as it erodes accessibility to welfare entitlements (e.g., Personal Independence Payments) the precise benefits that are designed to cover the additional costs of caring (Roulstone, 2015). ...
Accessible Summary
• In the UK very few people with learning disability and/or autism and their family‐carers have a paid job although a lot of them may wish to work. National plans from the Government have not helped to change this.
• This article talks about a consultation we did on adults with learning disabilities and/or autism who attend day centres and their family‐carers. We asked about their current situation, their employment and the barriers to work.
• We found out that very few people with learning disabilities and/or autism or their family‐carers were employed. We found that there were lots of things stopping people with learning disabilities and/or autism and family‐carers from being able to work.
• We conclude that disability theories like the “social model of disability” need to go back to looking at inclusion, citizenship and independence, based on the real life experience of people with a learning disability. The government needs to provide strong plans to help people with learning disabilities and/or autism and family‐carers get into work. “Co‐production” networks should be set up between people with learning disabilities and families to support employment.
Abstract
1.1 Background
Only 5.9% of working adults with a learning disability are in paid employment and their family‐carers are similarly likely to be unemployed, as they continue to take on an extended caring and advocacy role as the welfare state retreats. Despite social policy efforts to stimulate employment for people with a learning disability, there has been little or no progress. Changes in the language of welfare benefit departments seek to use the words once heralded as success for the Disability rights activists and proponents of the social model: such as Inclusion, independence and citizenship. A new definition of the social model of disability utilising Hannah Arendt needs to redefine the “private” sphere of the lived experience of people with a learning disability to allow for a better understanding of the inter‐dependencies that exist between people with a learning disability, their family carers and a wider support network.
1.2 Materials and Methods
Empirical data were collected in a mixed methods study while undertaking a consultation on the future of day services for people with a learning disability in a Local Authority in the north of England, UK.
1.3 Results
The results reveal high levels of inter‐dependence between people with a learning disability and their carers, combined with the continued financial struggle as a lived experience of caring. The study found that barriers in providing care and support restrict the rights of people with a learning disability and their carers to secure employment.
1.4 Conclusions
There is a need to reconceptualise the social model of disability to more closely resonate with the lived experiences of people with a learning disability and their carers. A newly revised theoretical approach should incorporate the "private" sphere of live acknowledging the inter‐dependent, co‐produced relationships, between people with a learning disability and their carers to support and enable employment for both people with a learning disability and their carers under the Care Act 2014 (Department of Health, 2014).
... He knew that employers must make reasonable adjustments and had thought about physical access to his work place (see Critten, 2016) but he had not thought about the hours he would have to work and the effect this would have on him physically (see Logiudice, 2016). Many people with disabilities may not be able to find fulltime employment, or their condition stops them from being permanently employed (Roulstone, 2015). There is much pressure given to young people with a disability to find paid work (Barnes and Mercer, 2005) but it is possible that this is unrealistic. ...
This chapter focuses on the transition between education and the employment of young people with a disability. Governments produce guidelines and legislation which are designed to ensure that people with disabilities are able to find employment. Programmes for the transition of students with a disability are designed and carried out by educational establishments and services such as Connexions. However, the case study of Nick illustrated the differences in the guidance given throughout his transition into employment, and he questioned aspects of government legislation which he felt were unhelpful to people with disabilities and, ultimately, to employers. The implications of his experiences are discussed with reference to transition guidance, to government legislation and to the personal and emotional cost to people with a disability.
... In addition, the recruitment purposefully targeted people who had made a claim for disability benefits in order to sample people who identified as disabled. However, disability social security rules cannot be assumed to provide an inclusive boundary for a construct of 'disabled people' (Roulstone 2015). Beatty and Fothergill (2015) highlight that many people who might previously have self-identified as disabled through the receipt of disability benefit may no longer do so and as such would have been excluded from this research. ...
This article seeks to examine the ways in which ‘work’ is a crucial domain within a holistic approach to understanding disability and family life. The research is based on the experiences of 49 people who either self-identified as disabled or were family members of a person with an impairment. The analysis focuses on the meaningfulness of work and argues that the meaning of work needs to be expanded in order to be more inclusive of disabled people. Issues of accessing and maintaining appropriate work and harmful work are also discussed. The research highlights the importance of work, both paid and unpaid, for disabled people and their families. However, the wrong kinds of work can have harmful consequences for disabled people and this needs to be acknowledged in policy focusing on access to work.
• Points of interest
• The study explores the experiences of paid work and non-involvement in paid work of disabled people and their families.
• The participants discussed the value of different kinds of work for disabled people
• The research highlights the importance of unpaid work for disabled people, including voluntary work and activism.
• Some participants faced constraints accessing and maintaining appropriate work and careers
• Some work and ways of working can be harmful to the health of disabled people
• Disabled people and their families make significant contributions to society
... (Model 6, Table 4). This is in spite of a shrinking category of disability in social security administration which has reduced the coverage and generosity of benefits for many affected by a disability (Roulstone, 2015). In part, we can see this reflected in the disproportionate growth (+23.2%) of those affected by a disability represented in the 2 nd decile of the income distribution (Table 2). ...
Official statistics tend to rely on a headcount approach to poverty measurement, distinguishing ‘the poor’ from the ‘non-poor’ on the basis of an anchored threshold. Invariably, this does little to engage with the gradations of material hardship affecting those living, to varying degrees, below the poverty line. In response, this paper interrogates an apparent flatlining in UK poverty to establish the changing profile of poverty, as well as those most affected by it. Drawing on the Family Resources survey, this paper reveals an increasing depth of poverty in the UK since 2010, with bifurcation observable in the living standards of different percentile groups below the poverty line. In addition, this paper demonstrates substantial compositional changes in the socio-demographic profile of (deep) poverty. Since 2010, the likelihood of falling into deep poverty has increased for women, children, Black people, larger families and those in full-time work. Within the context of COVID-19, I argue there is a need to re-think how we currently conceptualise poverty by better attending to internal heterogeneity within the broader analytical and methodological category of ‘the poor’. Doing so raises pressing questions about the prevailing modes of poverty measurement that tend to frame and delimit the social scientific analysis of poverty, as well as the policies deemed appropriate in tackling it.
... The groups of people and their conditions that are contained in the category of 'disability' is fluid and has changed over time. 3 Recent shifts have broadened the scope, adding people with mental health conditions, intellectual disabilities, developmental disorders and sensory impairments. This is reflected in our anti-discrimination laws: the Equality Act 2010 defines disability as 'a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on the ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities'. ...
This article examines the effects of UK welfare reform since 2008 on people with mental health conditions and disabilities. The results have been profound, particularly during a time of economic austerity, damaging the social safety net and pushing many vulnerable people into poverty and hardship. It has perpetuated inequalities and increased the social exclusion of disabled groups. The holes in the safety net require repair, alongside extensive social policy reform to both protect and empower people with disabilities and long-term conditions.
... First, economically, the costs related to disability have clearly and significantly been shifted from the individual and informal care sector to the state and public sector even though this is in part seen as a way of reducing public spending. This shift in itself is of significance considering that other countries (e.g., Great Britain) have lately been going in the opposite direction by retracting state expenses, notably by tightening eligibility criteria (Roulstone, 2015). As such, the policy represents a shift toward a "more family-oriented welfare state" (Johansson et al., 2011), that is, individuals will be less dependent on work and their families will be somewhat relieved of the costs related to disability. ...
In this article, we illustrate how Australia’s new National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) extends the active citizenship of people with disabilities. This is done by examining how the NDIS changes their relation between persons with disabilities and to the welfare state, and through an analysis of its eligibility criteria and needs assessment planning. The support provided and the way in which it is provided reproduce a particular understanding of disability that has a direct influence on the roles assigned to people with disabilities in society as well as on their opportunities to exercise their rights as active citizens. This is important because the implementation of NDIS in Australia is likely to influence the development of disability policy on a global level. Understanding how its mechanisms restricts or facilitates citizenship is therefore crucial.
... This led many disabled people being redefined as fit for employment which, rather than an act of empowerment, in reality meant the withdrawal of the welfare support (Wright, 2012;Baumberg, 2015) that was vital to live independently. This was further exacerbated by the reform of 'personal independence payments' which again included a major reassessment process that some scholars have evaluated as a form of 'state violence' towards disabled people in the UK (Roulstone, 2015) that has caused not only pain and distress to individuals but also the demonization and scapegoating of disabled people in society (Ryan, 2019). In response, organizations which form the disabled people's movement in the UK have sharply criticised the policies and discourses of austerity and welfare reform. ...
This article examines collective action and the alliances between social movement organizations engaged in the work of solidarity with disabled people within and across borders during austerity. Building upon social movement theory, specifically political opportunities (Eisinger, 1973; McAdam, 1996) and resource mobilisation (McCarthy and Zald, 1977), we focus our analysis on data from in-depth interviews with thirty-five organizations at the UK and European levels, where we examine both how solidarity is operationalized by such organizations and the everyday cooperation and alliances they build with others in a UK policy context that has been hostile to disabled people (Bambra and Smith, 2010; Garthwaite, 2014) and a European context which disabled people's solidarity organizations have sought to seize as political opportunities. Our study therefore adopts a multi-level approach by analysing the building of alliances between organizations at the local, national and transnational levels and it reveals the impact of the political context and organisational pressures which can diminish resources and generate competition, thus placing strains on solidarity between disabled people. 2
... Physical education of students with disorders of muscular skeletal apparatus (MSA) is regarded by specialists as pedagogic process, oriented on development of main and specific motor abilities, perfection of vitally important motor skills. On this base motor actions' technique is formed as well as moral-will sphere of disabled people is developed (Phelan, & Kinsella, 2014;Baril, 2015;Roulstone, 2015). As a result assessment of life quality is risen жизни (Duvdevany, 2010;Bolach, Prystupa, 2014;Makarova, 2014). ...
Purpose: development of approaches to improvement of coordination abilities of students with muscular skeletal apparatus disorders under influence of system of exercises and games with ball. Material: in the research students with disorders of muscular skeletal apparatus (n=63, 16-19 years' age, boys and girls) participated. The research was being carried out during 1.5 years (3 academic semesters). The students had disability of light and average degree. All they were under doctor's supervision and did not have counter indications to physical education. Coordination abilities were tested by attempts to get in target (vertical and horizontal) by ball and by movements' differentiation by power and space characteristics. Results: we provided approaches to improvement of students' physical fitness and to acquiring new motor skills and abilities, required for adaptation to everyday life. Characteristic feature of changes of applied forces' coordination is repeated mistake of their increasing. Assessment of space orientation showed underestimation of bio-kinematic links' correlation. It was found that the most effective motor functioning rehabilitation mean was worked out by us system of exercises and games with ball, the weight of which changed depending on the tasks to be solved. Exercises and games with small ball turned out to be the most effective for improvement of coordination. They ensure development of fine motor abilities and are the most accessible in space time and power perception of load. Conclusions: The conducted research witnesses about positive influence of exercises and games with ball on students' coordination abilities. We worked out system of specially selected exercises and games with ball for improvement of motor fitness and motor accuracy of students with disorders of motor muscular apparatus.
... Examples include the 2010 Coalition government's below inflation uprating of benefits, followed by a benefit rates freeze under the 2015 Conservative administration (Beatty & Fothergill, 2016). Another is the restriction of access to cash benefits by redrawing eligibility boundaries, for instance the Coalition government's prediction in 2013 of an eventual one quarter reduction in those eligible to access the disability benefit Personal Independence Payment (PIP) when it replaced Disability Living Allowance (DLA) (Roulstone, 2015;Kennedy, 2017). ...
This chapter offers an account of the emerging mental health survivor-led social movement against psychocompulsion. It begins with narratives describing the authors’ journeys into activism around these issues. This is followed by an overview of recent welfare ‘reforms’ and shifts in mental health policy and practice in the UK against which activists are organising. It goes on to describe activists’ collective responses and interventions to challenge these policy agendas, noting developing alliances and strategies of resistance. The chapter concludes by briefly examining emergent debates and policy issues for the movement.
... Accordingly, the rehabilitative goals of welfare and penal policy have been eroded and more punitive orientations have taken centre stage. While the exercise of coercive measures by the state to engender labour market participation is nothing new, the austerity phase of neoliberalism has heralded a concerted effort to enforce such compliance across much wider populations, simultaneously rolling back levels of welfare support to those groups previously regarded as exempt from the labour market (Roulstone, 2015). Processes of disciplinary proletarianisation are buttressed by the deployment of stigmatisation. ...
The case studies that will be presented in this book illustrate the extent to which a ‘punitive turn’ across a number of policy domains is a prominent and pervasive feature of neoliberalism in the UK. However, before we turn to these examples of policy implementation, this first chapter will outline a broader understanding of this phenomenon and its implications for activist strategy. Consequently, the chapter has two main aims. The first is to locate these punitive tendencies as a feature of the ‘integral’ state under contemporary neoliberalism, which utilises increasingly draconian and divisive means to maintain a degree of legitimacy for this system. These threats to consent-making processes are an effect of neoliberal reconfigurations of the interrelated spheres of production and social reproduction that underpin harmful and detrimental processes such as work intensification in the former and crises of care provision in the latter. However, neoliberal reforms have also resulted in demographic shifts both within labour markets and across society more widely that are engendering new patterns of contestation and resistance. Our second major aim in the chapter is, therefore, to explore the strategic implications of these shifting contexts and demographics for strategies of resistance and the development of oppositional currents and coalitions. In particular, and building on our analysis of these shifts, we propose a framework for activist strategy which we call the ‘integrative transitional’ approach (ITA). ITA takes account of these wider changes in social conditions by incorporating political demands that span productive and reproductive concerns and in so doing, we argue, has the potential to enhance activist efforts to build and strengthen diverse and broad-based alliances of resistance to punitive state-corporate policy agendas.
... In the UK, these public spending cuts are associated with wider social security 'welfare reforms' which have redrawn the boundaries of eligibility for disability-related and other social benefits (Roulstone 2015). The restriction of access to support (benefits and/or services) is coupled with an increased articulation of notions of deservingness, particularly linking disability to 'vulnerability' with the implications a continual theme within social policy research e.g. in relation to stigma and identity (Brown 2012). ...
In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis many countries embarked on a prolonged period of public sector ‘austerity’ which for some included seeking dramatic reductions in social security spending. It is in this context that the research investigates the negative impacts of interactions with the UK disability benefits system on the lives of disabled people. The research uses in-depth semi-structured interviews and a focus group to study the experiences of 49 people who either had an impairment or chronic health concern and/or were family carers for an adult or child with these concerns. The analysis identified four aggregate dimensions evidenced by the transcript data: harmful health and well-being consequences, negative financial and resource impacts, perverse employment effects and wider social disability concerns. These dimensions highlight how interactions with ‘social security’ policy in the contemporary context can have harmful, iatrogenic consequences for disabled people and their families.
... Such stringent measures in the assessment of PIP raise ethical concerns for how our society conceptualises 'disability'. Unlike ethnicity, sex and gender, disability is a complex concept in social policy that has the propensity to exclude the most vulnerable people of our society, given the interplay of objective, subjective, official and personal constructions of disability (Roulstone, 2015). Council, 2012). ...
After attending workshops about Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payments, Jamie Ferrie* reflects on the impact of the benefits system, and policy on mental health and the provision of psychological intervention.
This chapter focuses upon the spatial and temporal characteristics of hate experiences as they are described and reflected upon by participants, with a particular focus upon how these incidents affect their sense of being within different spaces. In doing so, I ask questions about the ways that hate can become an ordinary and anticipated experience within particular times and spaces. Such an approach explores how relations with other bodies, objects, and our surroundings can be felt. Following (Gorton in Feminist Theory, 8:1464–7001, 2007), it asks: ‘how do spatial relationships affect the way we feel?’ In order to take into account the spatial and temporal dimensions of hate.
Disability benefits function by demarcating categories of need (the administrative category of disability) and determine eligibility using assessments of functioning. In the UK, these assessments are the Work Capability Assessment and PIP assessment. Inherently technical and abstruse processes, these assessments have been opportune sites for welfare reform in recent years. Disability benefits have also been a central point of contention between disability studies and sociology. Sociology has traditionally favoured an ‘incomes approach’ and called for more adequate financial support from the state. Early figures in the disabled people’s movement rejected this position, and aligned with an oppression paradigm, argued for a more radical economic and social inclusion. We contend that this divide, set out in the Fundamental Principles of Disability, remains relevant for researching welfare reform today. This article treats benefits assessments as epistemic practices—interactional processes wherein claimants, their personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers come together in the production of knowledge about disability. Data include 50 in‐depth interviews with benefit claimants and a discourse analysis of official texts directed at claimants, personal health professionals and commercial assessment providers. We outline a phenomenon we term ‘epistemic sabotage’, whereby the knowledge claims of claimants and their health professionals are systemically disqualified.
This chapter outlines the levels of poverty, debt, and financial hardship in people with mental health conditions, the social security system, and living conditions, including neighbourhood deprivation, housing, and transport. People with mental health conditions are more likely to be excluded from material resources than others in society. They are over-represented in low-income group, those living in poor housing, and deprived environments. They are likely to be in debt or have other financial difficulties and to be receiving inadequate amounts of state benefits. The severity of the condition and its longevity exacerbates the degree of exclusion. There appears to be a two-way relationship between mental ill-health and material deprivation: social and environmental aspects of material exclusion play a role in the cause of mental ill-health and mental ill-health leads to material exclusion. Poverty mediates the relationship between mental health conditions and the many other social problems that people face, as well as impeding their ability to cope with their mental health difficulties. People’s responses to poor conditions are universal and, for those with mental health conditions, may be more appropriately seen as a consequence of their impoverished circumstances rather than due to their mental health conditions.
This chapter builds from the previous one to develop a focused analysis that explores the value of key ideas from practice theory-based energy research for analyses of energy poverty. The chapter uses examples from in-depth qualitative research to give attention to the constitution of need in terms of implications for energy deprivation, as well as examining the ways that power relations shape processes of recruitment and defection from practices. In this, it offers distinctive research trajectories for energy poverty research by extending beyond concern with people’s abilities to meet needs or achieve capabilities. And it offers a basis for response to critiques of practice-informed analyses of energy demand that highlight the limited attention given to inequalities within such work.
This chapter introduces practice theory-inspired energy demand research focusing on key concepts and insights that speak to issues of inequality. The discussion explicates core ideas that have relevance in this respect, while also engaging with existing works that have sought to address questions of inequality from within practice-based energy research. The chapter then examines an important frontier in practice theory-inspired energy research of key relevance, I argue, for energy poverty—that of invisible energy policy. Finally, I move to draw together the different conceptual threads that have been laid out through the book thus far and raise key questions that emerge for analysis of energy poverty.
This chapter explores the value of bringing thought about invisible energy policy together with key analytic endeavours in the field of energy poverty. It uses empirical material to develop understanding of how capabilities that are linked to experiences of energy deprivation are shaped by (non-energy) policy. Within this, the chapter explores the potential for the invisible energy policy orientation to advance existing work related to the ways that wider discourses and framings shape experiences of energy poverty issues. The chapter gives particular focus to the implications of relations between discourses of fuel poverty and those of broader poverty, arising from energy and welfare policy, respectively, extending analysis by exploring how such discourses act upon subjects in ways that affect possibilities for challenging conditions of energy poverty.
This chapter presents a detailed discussion of contemporary UK energy demand policy and welfare policy. These two areas of policy form the focus of the empirical research that will be utilised to examine and develop the conceptual ideas discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 . Through this chapter, I first discuss policies relating to fuel poverty, contextualising them in relation to wider energy demand strategies, before going on to address welfare policy with focus on contemporary reforms. In concluding the chapter, I explore existing forms of interconnection for these different policy areas and issues, explicating some of the key challenges that arise for thinking across different domains.
This concluding chapter discusses the key contributions of the book reflecting on the insights produced through the analysis and the wider implications for research, policy, and practice. The significance of the analysis for energy poverty research is discussed, as is the relevance for practice theory-based scholarship on energy. Discussion reflects on the use of the capabilities approach within the analysis and how ideas about invisible energy policy and the constitution of need can be important for understanding energy poverty, but also explores the potential for bringing inequality more firmly into practice theory-based analyses.
The starting point for this book is to explicate key conceptual interventions within the large body of existing work on energy poverty. This chapter discusses the trajectories of this research tradition from analyses focused more narrowly on notions of fuel poverty to those foregrounding issues of energy vulnerability, and through to concepts of precarity and capabilities. It examines the frontiers of analysis engaging with work that has sought to move beyond preoccupations with heat and the spatial domain of the home and advance more complex understandings of the issues. The chapter concludes setting out the key tenets of the literature and discussing how conceptualisations can be further advanced in analysis of energy poverty.
Since the 1980s, “personalisation” is at the centre of the evolution of disability policies and more generally of the Welfare state. It refers on one hand to the question of self-determination through the allocation of personalised budgets, and on the other to the adaptation of care to the specificities of a given person, through the development of “person-centred” care. In this article we study the issue of the personalisation of care from a point of view intermediate to these two dimensions, that of the transformation of social care organisations. Using the example of care provided to people with multiple impairments in France, we analyse how new social care organisations have addressed the diversity and specificity of the needs of these people. This analysis thus proposes a new way to think about the personalisation of policy responses implemented by the welfare state.
In his study of disability and policy making in Canada, Michael Prince conceptualised the idea of ‘absent citizens’ to describe how people with disabilities were marginalised in the political process and disability policy treated in a piecemeal fashion. This article examines whether disabled people in the UK also constitute absent citizens by analysing the election manifestos produced by the two main parties over the past decade. The research finds an asymmetry in the parties’ attention to disability policy from 2017 onwards when disabled people were present as part of the wider critique of the Conservative’s austerity agenda. Conversely, disabled people constituted a sort absent-presence for the Conservatives, as they were subjected to policies which disproportionately affected them, yet this was not made explicit. Finally, there is evidence to suggest a similar piecemeal approach to disability policy, but it would be difficult to frame disabled people as totally absent citizens.
• Points of interest
• Disabled people in the UK have been disproportionately affected by the austerity politics of the past decade, but UK political parties have not always recognised or responded to disability inequality.
• This paper looks at disability policy pledges contained in UK political party manifestos since 2010.
• This paper finds a lack of attention paid to disability policy in 2010 and 2015 but an increased number of disability policies in Labour’s manifestos in 2017 and 2019.
• This paper argues that although disabled people are absent from earlier Conservative manifestos they were subjected to policies that negatively affected them, making disabled people simultaneously absent and present.
• Finally, this paper also argues that the approach of the political parties to disability policy can best be described as piecemeal.
Devant l’augmentation du nombre de personnes réclamant une protection sociale pour incapacité au travail, plusieurs juridictions resserrent leurs critères d’éligibilité aux programmes. Les personnes souffrant de problèmes de santé mentale sont particulièrement touchées par ces réformes. Cet article documente l’expérience spécifique de personnes souffrant de problèmes de santé mentale engagées dans une demande d’accès au programme québécois de solidarité sociale. Leurs expériences mettent en lumière les enjeux liés au processus médico-administratif d’accès au programme. La discussion ouvre sur des pistes de réflexion pour diminuer les impacts négatifs du processus sur les personnes concernées.
The under-utilisation of the labour of disabled and older people is a problem across the European Union (EU) but is most pronounced in Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states, where labour shortages are greatest. This presents a puzzle that is explored with reference to a project with social partners from Estonia, Hungary and Poland, the objective of which was to stimulate debate and actions around the role of industrial relations actors in facilitating work accommodations for disabled and older people. After establishing the extent of the demographic labour crisis in these countries, the policy tools being employed to address it are scrutinised and found wanting. A variety of factors are identified as having contributed to debate in this area: historical legacy; social policy path-dependency; social partner identity and agency; a ‘dead letter’ approach to EU policies and the limited role of civil society organisations. We examine the potential of the concept of sustainable work, more commonly found in Northern Europe, to influence alternative approaches to the employment of disabled and older people in countries where state, labour and employment relations differ.
Systematic literature searching identified 29 relevant health and social sciences articles for review on the topic of austerity policies and their impacts on the health and social care of disabled, elderly and immigrants in the United Kingdom (UK). Since 2010, government changes to previously state-funded areas meant levels of funding and eligibility changed significantly. Self-funding or self-managing healthcare, but more often social care, was transferred to individuals. While additional funding was given for some treatments, prevention approaches were cut. More people had to depend on non-professional care, mostly from family. Many family carers received no professional advice or information and mostly had to reduce their own employment hours and income to care for a dependent. The quality of services, professional or non-professional, became poorer than pre-2010. These changes increased marginalisation and stigma. Consequently, many ‘vulnerable’ became ‘vilified’ – disabled, elderly and immigrants often of the worst affected.
• Points of interest
• Government definitions of ‘disability’, ‘elderly’ and ‘immigrant’ change. UK changes reduced the health and social care available to individuals recently.
• Individuals were made responsible for knowing about changes that affected them and had to manage their care without professional guidance and support. Some had to use personal funding to maintain their quality of life.
• Many people felt stigmatised because of the changes and were nervous about seeking help they were entitled to.
• Health and social care should be joined-up and involve assessment, funding, and services offered as a package. This should be ideally focused on preventing worsening health, early treatment and support for managing long-term conditions.
• Judging that people currently contributing to the economy through work as those who deserve government services is wrong. Assisting the well-being of those who cannot currently contribute can recognise past contributions and improve potential to contribute, and may reduce future needs for government services.
This study assessed the subjective well‐being and perceived stress of unpaid carers of disability benefit claimants. A total of 129 carers from the UK were surveyed between July and September 2017, using a cross‐sectional design. Carers, who provided unpaid support to sick or disabled friends, family or neighbours in a non‐professional capacity, reported here as unpaid carers, were asked to complete a web‐based questionnaire comprising of the Perceived Stress–10‐item Scale (PSS‐10), the Personal Wellbeing Index–Adult (PWI‐A), sociodemographic characteristics, the time they spent caring per day and the number of Personal Independence Payment and Work Capability Assessment interviews prepared for and attended by the person they cared for. Hierarchical regression analyses were performed to assess the effects of the number of benefit assessments on stress and well‐being scores, controlling for carers' sociodemographic characteristics and the time they spent caring. Analyses revealed that the number of times that claimants were exposed to benefit assessments significantly and negatively predicted unpaid carers' well‐being and was positively related to their stress levels. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and hours supporting per day, benefit assessments predicted 8.1% of perceived stress and 4.3% of well‐being variance. Being a female unpaid carer of a disability benefit claimant negatively predicted 7.5% of well‐being variance. The results offered unique evidence of the negative psychological effects of disability benefit assessments upon unpaid carers, while adding to the evidence of female carers facing increased risks of psychological distress.
Little scholarly work has focused on the lived experience of people claiming disability benefits. Drawing on semi‐structured interviews with 30 Jewish‐Israeli men and women with physical impairments, this paper seeks to fill this gap in the literature. Analysis of the interviews yielded three main themes: the material and psycho‐social aspects of the Israeli disability benefits system, respectively, and the coping strategies applied by the participants in their efforts to navigate the system and address their needs. The distinction between the first two themes is discussed as resonating with recent calls for an integrated disability justice conceptualization, one that entails both redistributive and recognitive aspects. The third theme is highlighted as countering the image of ‘passivity’ that is all too often associated with being on disability benefits.
This study aimed to provide insight into the experiences of and attitudes to sport and physical activity for disabled people. Data were generated through semi-structured interviews with eight facilitators and focus groups with 24 members across three disability support organisations. Using ableism as the primary sensitising concept, our iterative analysis revealed that although all facilitators and disabled people were aware of the physical and mental wellbeing benefits of sport and physical activity, only 2 of the 24 disabled participants met the UK Government guidelines for physical activity. Findings showed that participation was hampered by a number of external and internal barriers, including the cost of transport and activities, ineffective modes of communication and advertisement, preconceived images of sport as competitive and judgemental, and anxieties about sporting abilities. Importantly, this study highlighted that many of these barriers were a pretext for a lack of enjoyment, and makes suggestions for future practice.
The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work traverses new territory by providing a cutting-edge overview of the work of classic and contemporary theorists, in a way that expands their application and utility in social work education and practice; thus, providing a bridge between critical theory, philosophy, and social work.
Each chapter showcases the work of a specific critical educational, philosophical and/or social theorist including: Henry Giroux, Michel Foucault, Cornelius Castoriadis, Herbert Marcuse, Paulo Freire, bell hooks, Joan Tronto, Iris Marion Young, Karl Marx, Antonio Gramsci and many others to elucidate the ways in which their key pedagogic concepts can be applied to specific aspects of social work education and practice. The text exhibits a range of research-based approaches to educating social work practitioners as agents of social change. It provides a robust and much needed, alternative paradigm to the technique-driven ‘conservative revolution’ currently being fostered by neoliberalism in both social work education and practice.
The volume will be instructive for social work educators who aim to teach for social change, by assisting students to develop counter-hegemonic practices of resistance and agency, and reflecting on the pedagogic role of social work practice more widely. The volume holds relevance for both postgraduate and undergraduate/qualifying social work and human services courses around the world.
Values such as ‘access’ and ‘inclusion’ are unquestioned in the contemporary educational landscape. But many methods of addressing these issues — installing signs, ramps, and accessible washrooms — frame disability only as a problem to be ‘fixed.’ The Question of Access investigates the social meanings of access in contemporary university life from the perspective of Cultural Disability Studies. Through narratives of struggle and analyses of policy and everyday practices, Tanya Titchkosky shows how interpretations of access reproduce conceptions of who belongs, where and when. Titchkosky examines how the bureaucratization of access issues has affected understandings of our lives together in social space. Representing ‘access’ as a beginning point for how disability can be rethought, rather than as a mere synonym for justice, The Question of Access allows readers to critically question their own implicit conceptions of disability, non-disability, and access.
As witnessed by recent national policy battles over health care and climate change, the policy environment in the United States (U.S.) is increasingly politically polarized. U.S. public policy is progressively driven by divisive symbols and dominated by morality debates often articulated in the form of emotional narratives. One such issue that has gained attention in the U.S., partially due to efforts of First Lady Michelle Obama, is the increasing levels of obesity. Obesity policy advocates warn that the U.S. is facing a crisis that impacts not only our health, but our national competitiveness; not only our military preparedness, but our national security. Our goal is not to get involved in the scientific debate over obesity and its costs to society but rather to explore the role that policy narratives and causal attribution play in determining attitudes toward obesity and obesity policy. We contend that an individual's view of obesity is shaped by their view of individual rights and responsibilities and of individual morality; and determined more by stories (especially narratives that “fit” with those views) than by science. Our paper seeks to test whether science or other factors primarily shape one's view of government's appropriate role relative to the obesity issue and to examine which of two foundational moral narratives is more convincing in the obesity policy realm. Using a sample of 172 respondents at two institutions of higher education in the United States, we find that a “Strict Father Morality” narrative was more convincing than a science statement in influencing an individual's view of obesity. Respondents believed that obesity was a serious problem, but they were deeply divided over government's role in addressing the obesity issue. Female respondents were the most supportive of governmental efforts to address obesity. We explore the potential impact of our findings for public policy development and future research.
Beatty C. and Fothergill S. (2005) The diversion from 'unemployment' to 'sickness' across British regions and districts, Regional Studies 39 , 837-854. Around 2.7 million non-employed adults of working age in the UK claim sickness-related benefits, and the numbers have risen steeply over time. The very large variation in the numbers across districts and regions points strongly to extensive hidden unemployment, especially in older industrial areas affected by job losses. This paper builds on two previous papers by the same authors - one dealing with the theoretical framework and the other with a local case study - to present wholly new estimates of the scale of the diversion across all parts of the country. It also questions contemporary perceptions of the UK labour market and the validity of current approaches to re-engaging sickness claimants with employment.
When we wrote the earlier edition of this book in 1974 it was necessary to argue the case for studying the social values and the social and political ideas of those who write about social welfare. That is now no longer the case. The study of values and social theories has come to be seen as central to the understanding of social policies. The structure of this revised book is the same as before. What we have done with each chapter is to review and revise it in the light of what has been written in recent years and in line with changes in our own ideas. Certainly, much has changed. The group we style the anti-collectivists has emerged from comparative obscurity to prominence in Britain and in other countries. New and important statements of anti-coUectivist principles and practice have been published, though very few of them have been implemented by governments.
With the Conservative Party breaking new ground in forming a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, this book examines the development and content of the Conservatives' approaches to social policy and how they inform the Coalition's policies. Chapters cover the development of Conservative Party social policy and specific policy areas. The book will be of interest to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students, and everyone with an interest in the Conservative Party and the Coalition government's social policies.
In an era of scarce social resources the question of the changing social policy constructions and responses to disabled people has become increasingly important. Paradoxically, some disabled people are realising new freedoms and choices never before envisioned, whilst others are prey to major retractions in public services and aggressive attempts to redefine who counts as 'genuinely disabled'. Understanding disability policy locates disability policy into broader social policy and welfare policy writings and goes beyond narrow statutory evaluations of welfare to embrace a range of indicators of disabled people's welfare. The book critically explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities. It also situates welfare and disability policy in the broader conceptual shifts to the social model of disability and its critics. Finally it explores the possible connection between changing official and academic constructions of disability and their implications for social policy in the 21st century. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above. © The Policy Press and the Social Policy Association 2012. All rights reserved.
The slow-down in the pace of accumulation has provided the opportunity for a widespread rejection of Keynesian political economy and an onslaught on the policies, values and organizations of social democracy. There has always been an element among British intellectuals which has never required much inducement to join a collective stampede to the right. We are constantly being told that 'intellectuals' are finally losing faith in socialism (this follows their previous final rejection of it in the early 1950s). They have been converted, even at this late hour, to the need to resist totalitarianism and the British Labour Party, and to reject the beliefs in collectivism and equality that were enshrined in the policies and institutions established in the 1940s. Aside from these 'men who have changed their minds', swayed by the populist clamour of the new right, there has also been in recent years a real intellectual change, a remarkable revival of liberal political economy through the elaboration of the doctrine of the social market economy, a doctrine which, under different labels, has made increasing headway within the Conservative party in the last ten years. The Conservative Government elected in 1979 had a group of ministers in the crucial economic ministries (Treasury, Industry, Trade, Energy), who were all adherents of the doctrine and prepared to govern in accordance with its prescriptions. The term social market economy originated in Germany from the neo-liberal ideas that were current there after 1945. In Britain and America similar ideas have been put forward by a number of theorists including F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, and popularized in Britain by organizations like the Institute for Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies, by lead writers in the Times and Daily Telegraph, by economic commentators such as Peter Jay, Samuel Brittan, and Patrick Hutber, and by Conservative politicians (Enoch Powell at first; more recently, Keith Joseph).
The recent history of the American welfare state has been viewed with dismay by those on the left because of the steady contraction of benefits under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In contrast, Jennifer L. Erkulwater describes the remarkable success of advocacy for the disabled at a time when the federal government was seemingly impervious to liberal policy innovations.
Since the War on Poverty the American public's support for social-welfare policies has gradually eroded as conservative politicians have gained power and demographic changes and uncertain economic growth have enhanced pressures for fiscal retrenchment. Yet, the past thirty years have also seen a dramatic expansion of disability benefits. This book is the first to examine how entitlements for the disabled have fared in the wake of the disability-rights movement. This movement initially fought to end the institutionalization of the severely disabled and moved on to claim that antidiscrimination laws would allow the disabled to work and become less dependent on welfare. It also had a profound impact on entitlements.
Erkulwater demonstrates that the Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs enacted between 1972 and 2000 succeeded because policy elites switched from welfare-based approaches to the civil-rights rhetoric used by the disability-rights movement. The work of liberal advocates who sought to end the segregation of the disabled in custodial institutions and integrate them into their home communities contributed to the growth of programs providing financial assistance to disabled citizens and to the recent controversies surrounding the future direction of disability policy.
Disability Living Allowance (DLA) was introduced in the United Kingdom explicitly to help offset the extra costs of disability. The scrapping of DLA and its replacement with the so-called Personal Independence Payment is causing massive concern across the United Kingdom, not least because it comes in the wake of a large number of other cuts, all of which impact disproportionately on disabled people. These changes reflect the retraction of ‘welfare’ across many European countries. As the government has refused to perform a cumulative impact assessment to date, it has been left to grassroots organisations such as DPAC to assess the damage and put the bigger picture together. An article in the New Statesman reports research showing that by 2018 disabled people are set to lose an astonishing £28.3 billion worth of financial support. These changes are going to affect up to 3.7 million disabled people in total.
The emergence of the ‘New Deal’ and its attendant claim to be part of a new political and social future based on the ‘third way’ seems to offer formerly excluded people new horizons for social inclusion. This paper provides a critical exploration of the likely impact of the ‘New Deal’ for disabled people. The paper contextualises the ‘New Deal’ in the wider ideology and rhetoric of ‘Welfare to Work’. In doing so, it highlights similarities between ‘New Deal’, ‘Welfare to Work’ and the victim blaming ideas which characterised discussions of a growing ‘social underclass' in the 1980s. By looking at the way the disability problem is framed within the ‘New Deal’ and ‘Welfare to Work’, it will be argued that it is unlikely to address the nature of employment barriers, indeed risks seriously misrepresenting the causes of disabled people's economic and social exclusion. In this way, its ideological underpinnings may simply reaffirm disabled people's economic and social dependency.
Background:
In line with the NICE guidance, an NHS-commissioned case management intervention was provided for individuals receiving Incapacity Benefit payments for ≥3 years in the North East of England. The intervention aimed to improve the health of the participants.
Methods:
A total of 131 participants receiving the intervention were compared over 9 months with a (non-equivalent) comparison group of 229 receiving Incapacity Benefit payments and usual care. Health was measured using EQ-5D, EQ-VAS, SF-8, HADS and the Nordic Musculoskeletal questionnaire. Socio-demographic and health behaviour data were also collected. Fixed-effects linear models with correlated errors were used to compare health changes between groups over time. A preliminary cost-utility analysis was also conducted.
Results:
The comparison group measures of health were stable over time. Starting from comparatively poor initial levels, case-management group generic (EQ5D, EQ-VAS) and mental health (HADS-A, HADS-D and SF8-MCS) measures improved within 6 months to similar levels found in the comparison group. Musculoskeletal (Nordic 2) and health behaviours did not improve. Tentative estimates of cost-utility suggest an intervention cost in the region of £16 700-£23 500 per QALY.
Conclusions:
Case management interventions may improve the health of Incapacity Benefit recipients. Further research is required to help confirm these pilot findings.
Following establishment of the Conservative‐Liberal Democrat coalition, welfare benefits and those who receive them have become of increased significance, with the government and the media alike lamenting the amount of people receiving benefits and what could, and indeed should, be done about it. With a recent White Paper outlining a new Universal Credit, an integrated working age credit that will replace a range of benefits including the Employment Support Allowance for ill and disabled recipients, it means that once again sickness‐related benefits are back in the spotlight. This piece critically reflects upon the way people receiving sickness‐related benefits such as Incapacity Benefit and Employment Support Allowance can be labelled, portrayed and discussed within a wider rhetoric that encompasses governmental, public and media attitudes. Unfortunately, the impacts of such rhetoric could be counter‐productive with regards to employer responses to ill and disabled individuals. Yet policy remains centred largely on the supply rather than the demand side of labour. As a consequence, policies that target and highlight the functional limitations of individuals with perceived impairments are prioritised and supported at the expense of those which draw attention to and seek to resolve the stark inequalities of the social organisation of work.
An important policy issue in recent years concerns the number of people claiming disability benefits for reasons of incapacity for work. We distinguish between ‘work disability’, which may have its roots in economic and social circumstances, and ‘health disability’ which arises from clear diagnosed medical conditions. Although there is a link between work and health disability, economic conditions, and in particular the ‘business cycle’ and variations in the risk of unemployment over time and across localities, may play an important part in explaining both the stock of disability benefit claimants and inflows to and outflow from that stock. We employ a variety of cross?country and country?specific household panel data sets, as well as administrative data, to test whether disability benefit claims rise when unemployment is higher, and also to investigate the impact of unemployment rates on flows on and off the benefit rolls. We find strong evidence that local variations in unemployment have an important explanatory role for disability benefit receipt, with higher total enrolments, lower outflows from rolls and, often, higher inflows into disability rolls in regions and periods of above?average unemployment. Although general subjective measures of selfreported disability and longstanding illness are also positively associated with unemployment rates, inclusion of self?reported health measures does not eliminate the statistical relationship between unemployment rates and disability benefit receipt; indeed including general measures of health often strengthens that underlying relationship. Intriguingly, we also find some evidence from the United Kingdom and the United States that the prevalence of self?reported ‘objective’ specific indicators of disability are often pro?cyclical – that is, the incidence of specific forms of disability are pro?cyclical whereas claims for disability benefits given specific health conditions are counter?cyclical. Overall,
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Barton Cancer Sufferer Loses Disability Benefits Appeal
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